Sunday: 3 hours of packing. 1 hour of back-and-forth. 11 hours of driving (5 hours of music, 6 hours of radio plays.) 3 hours of reading. Monday: 9 hours actually in the office. 7.5 hours of meetings.I normally have several hours a day of tele-meetings. Attending a meeting is much less onerous when it can be done with continuous partial… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
It Can’t Be Done
Why? Why would you try to take not just one, but two “highly complex” novels and try to make a film out of them? Hyperion deals with a space war, with most of the action taking place on a planet named Hyperion, known not only for its electricity-spewing trees but also for the Time Tombs, large artifacts that can move… Read more →
Scottish protection rackets
Things I Learned Today #1: “blackmail” is a Scottish word, and the Highland Scots invented the protection rackets. World Wide Words: Blackmail The mail in blackmail (at various times also spelled maill, male and in other ways) is an old Scots word for rent. This was usually paid in what was often called white money, silver coins. It comes from… Read more →
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Is the Wizard Of Oz really a political cartoon?
Over the last couple of nights I’ve re-read all of Grant Morrison’s brilliant and bizarre run on the Doom Patrol. Some of this run was previously mentioned here in the context of a discussion of Borges and Serafini. (An aside: this run started almost 20 years ago! I am so old.) It’s great, great stuff, and if you haven’t read… Read more →
Today’s Must Read
TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Today’s Must Read More than five years after its composition, we finally see a copy of John Yoo’s March 14, 2003 memo to William Haynes, then the Defense Department’s general counsel. It was, as The New York Times and Washington Post report, a green light for military interrogators to use just about any technique… Read more →
Today’s Only Content
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present for your edification, a highly-trained Canadian actor who has spent 30 years working in Britain (on stage and screen, and in over 200 BBC radio plays, among other things) playing the part of a stage actor from Tennessee in the 1960s, who is in turn playing the part of a British narrator in Victorian times,… Read more →
It’s Here!
And boy, is it good. Read more →
Monday Miscellany
It’s really a miscellany today. I was half-tempted to title this 88 lines about 44 links, and maybe even do it in some kind of poetic structure, but fortunately a combination of laziness and good sense prevailed. Nice to see that former local (and HGPA-member) Brian O’Malley‘s movie deal is actually happening–at least leads are being cast and a start… Read more →
Maintenance
I’m about to move up to WordPress 2.5. If there are any issues apparent before midnight (EST) assume I’m aware and working on them. After that, please drop me a comment if you see something broken. Read more →
The Great Song Of Indifference
One of my favourite music videos of all time, for Geldof‘s second-best song. The woman playing the bodhrán–the one with all the stage presence of a bass player–scares me. A lot. Read more →
I love it
Holy “ask and ye shall receive”, Batman! From the CBC The National Union of Public and General Employees, which represents more than 340,000 workers across the country, on Friday wrote to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to investigate the practice of “traffic shaping” and its impact on internet users. “These internet service providers are, with little or no public… Read more →
Watts on Earth Hour
Some of my cynical thoughts on “Earth Hour” tonight are echoed, and then turned up to 11 by Canadian hard SF author, Peter Watts. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Torontonians will celebrate the event by climbing into their SUVs and driving out to Downsview Park, there to light candles in the darkness. The Eaton’s Center up at Yonge and Dundas is… Read more →
Saturday Night Characters 1: The Cleaver Sleeve
When asked about my home town, I usually reply with one of two quips. Either “it’s a great place to be from” or “it may be smallish, but it has a high character ratio”. That second line which inevitably leads into discussions of the various people that are “real characters” that everyone in the conversation has known, or heard of.… Read more →
An Oldie But A Goodie
The ‘net memes are often easy to pass by, but there’s something about the CD Cover one that amuses me. My result is shown above (click for the larger version). Tons of other ones–many of which are disturbingly plausible–at the flickr pool. The extremely Net-savvy among you will be able to place the font used for the band name. Read more →
